10 Principles Of Intuitive Eating: Overcome The Diet Mentality
The 10 principles of intuitive eating are a great guideline if you are getting started with intuitive eating and are not sure exactly how to do it.
Intuitive eating is an approach to eating that doesn’t involve diets or strict restrictions. It is a gentler approach that is all about allowing your body to tell you when it’s hungry and what to eat instead of listening to advice outside of yourself.
It really is bringing your connection back to yourself and eating in a way that honors your natural hunger signals and what is best for your body.
What Is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive eating is all about honoring your body and what it wants. You’ve grown up in a society that says you need to eat a certain way to be healthy or to lose weight and that simply isn’t true. You are unique and so is your body. So, what you eat and what is best for you will be different than it is for someone else.
Everyone has different needs based on things such as gender, activity level, emotions, consciousness (yes, different levels of consciousness require different things), age, hormone levels, and much more. There is no one size fits all.
This is where intuitive eating comes into the picture. You eat based on what your body needs at that time.
What you require today will be different than tomorrow. What you require in the springtime will be different than in the wintertime. What you require when you have your period or are going through menopause or are ovulating will be different than at other times of the month. How much stress you are currently going through or not going through will cause you to require different foods as well.
Intuitive eating is the most natural way to eat and the way you are meant to eat. No more listening to ‘gurus’ telling you what your body needs. You know best what your body needs to thrive.
Intuitive eating is about listening to your body and paying attention to how it feels.
How do you feel when you eat a piece of chocolate vs an orange?
How do you feel when you eat first thing in the morning vs fasting for a few hours?
How do you feel when you drink coffee vs when you drink tea?
These are the questions that intuitive eating asks you to explore.
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The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating
1. Reject the Diet Mentality
The first principle of intuitive eating is to reject the diet mentality. Intuitive eating is NOT a diet; it is a way of life.
It’s important to consider that what you’ve been taught about diet and nutrition may not be 100% right and that your body knows better than anyone else what is good for it.
Your body is super smart, and it knows exactly what it needs to thrive. A specific diet is hard to stick to in the long run because your body will always show you what it needs. If you listen to it, then it will transform into its healthiest version of itself. There is a lot of wisdom in your body that you can’t find in a diet.
2. Honor Your Hunger
You are hungry for a reason and it’s because your body needs fuel. Your body can anticipate what you’re doing in your day, and it knows what nutrients will help you the most. For example, your body anticipates whether you are going to be doing a strenuous workout or whether you are going to be doing computer work.
How does it know this? It knows from past experience as well as your energy and emotions. It can feel when you are getting amped up to workout or whether you are getting ready for a day on the computer. Your body is very smart and it’s important to honor what it needs.
If you make different choices in your day, your body may be less hungry and crave different foods. For example, if you work out, your body may naturally want to eat healthier…honor that.
Or if you work on raising your vibration and feeling good, your body will want to naturally eat better…honor that.
If you are purging your emotions and feel down and sad, your body may want to eat comfort food…honor that.
It is all perfect and right for what your body needs at that time. There is no wrong with intuitive eating.
What I’ve found after losing 37 lbs is that when I feel good, I naturally reach for healthier foods, and when I feel bad, I reach for comfort foods.
If I raise my vibe and feel better, I don’t have to use my willpower to make healthier choices because I naturally choose healthier foods.
However, I never get upset with myself for honoring the times I’m hungrier and eat ‘bad’ because I know that at that time, my body needed that.
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3. Make Peace with Food
The third principle of intuitive eating is understanding that food is not your enemy and it’s important to make peace with it. You may have a bad relationship with food due to your mindset and past experience with it, but the food itself isn’t something to fear.
When you feel out of control with your eating, you may tend to blame the food and create a disharmonious relationship with it. This principle is bringing back that sense of peace with your food.
Think about when you were a little kid, and you didn’t fear food or label it as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. You simply ate it because it felt good. It wasn’t until you learned about nutrition and had outside influences (such as peer groups, social media, etc.), that you began to label things as good and bad.
This principle helps to take you back to that place where food was enjoyable and something that nourished you. It helps you to make peace with something that once brought you pleasure and joy and not make food the enemy.
4. Challenge the Food Police
Absolutely no one knows what is better for you than you. You are the one living in your body and having your own experiences, and beliefs with food. So, if someone thinks they know better than you what is best for you, they don’t. Even if they’re a professional, you know your body best.
If someone tries to tell you what is best for you, challenge their ideas by letting them know that you know what is best for you.
This is why intuitive eating is so beneficial to you, you literally listen to what your body wants and feed it what feels best to it at that particular moment. Maybe tomorrow is different and that is ok. Your body adjusts with you depending on so many factors as I mentioned above.
5. Discover the Satisfaction Factor
When you deprive yourself of what you want then you’ll never be satisfied. If you eat what you want, become satisfied, and then stop, you stay in control and don’t overeat. This principle is about noticing when you feel satisfied and not depriving yourself of anything.
I know this principle all too well. When I lost 37 lbs, I never deprived myself of anything. I kept all the food that I liked such as treats in my house, but I only ate them when I felt like it. I didn’t binge eat or emotionally eat them like I used to. I ate a small amount to satisfy myself without going overboard.
I never deprived myself because when I did in the past, I ended up eating way more to try and fill the craving which never worked. I never told myself that certain foods were off-limits. I just chose in every moment what felt good to me and that helped me to feel satisfied while not resisting anything. This helped me lose weight because I wasn’t carrying the vibration of “resistance” within me.
6. Respect Your Fullness
Respecting your fullness is all about paying attention to when you are full and stopping eating when you feel satiated. We live in a culture where everything is supersized, and the portions are much larger than what most people need. This can easily make someone overeat to not waste food. But you are hurting your body when you do that.
It’s a great idea to cook most of your meals at home and make your own portion sizes that feel right to you. If you feel full, stop eating and save the rest for leftovers.
By bringing yourself back to noticing when you are full and then stopping is a great intuitive habit to get back into. Don’t worry about the size or what you think should make you full, really listen to your body.
One day you may need more food than another day. Every day will be unique for you. Try to get to the place of noticing when you are full and then stopping. This is a great way to reconnect with your body and bring your body back into balance. Your body knows when it’s full and how to regulate itself.
7. Cope with Your Emotions
Emotions are a huge part as to why you may overeat or not eat intuitively. When working with this principle, it’s important to find a healthy way to cope with your emotions that doesn’t involve food. When the urge to overeat comes from an emotional cause, take the steps to do something different.
There are many different ways to cope with your emotions. Here are a few examples of what you can do:
- Shadow work
- Meditation
- Exercise
- Going out in nature
- Breathwork
- Journaling
- Feeling your emotions instead of pushing them away
- Talking to a trustworthy friend
- Drinking tea or something healthy instead of turning to food
- Taking a bath
8. Respect Your Body
The 8th principle of intuitive eating is respecting your body. You have a certain body shape and size for a reason. Does it mean that it can’t be changed? No, of course, it can. But it’s also important to understand that you chose this body for a reason.
Before you incarnated you chose what your physical body would look like. You did this for a particular reason. Honor your body for what it does for you and understand that everyone’s bodies are different and unique.
You can change your body with the law of attraction but that first comes with acceptance. When you accept yourself and treat your body with respect, it will automatically shape and form into its best self.
9. Movement
Another important principle of intuitive eating is movement. This type of movement is enjoyable and makes you feel good. It’s not the type you dread and have to suffer the whole way through that puts a ton of stress on your body. Unless of course, you like how that makes you feel afterwards, then go for it.
This movement works with the rhythm of your body and flows with you. It is something that feels good and gets you doing some type of physical activity.
Your body is meant to move, and it wants to move. So, pick something that you enjoy and start with that. Any movement is better than no movement at all.
10. Gentle Nutrition
The last principle of intuitive eating is gentle nutrition. This means making healthy choices but not being super strict about them. It’s about slowly and gradually making minor changes to your diet that feel good.
An example of gentle nutrition is trading one cup of coffee for one glass of water. Or eating an apple instead of a bag of chips as your bedtime snack.
It’s small changes that aren’t going to freak out your body and mind. If you try to overhaul your whole diet it may not only be hard on your body but your mind and ego might freak out and you may unknowingly sabotage yourself.
But if you slowly and gradually make small changes, it’s enough to make a difference without overwhelming your mind and body all at once.
Benefits of Intuitive Eating
There are many benefits to intuitive eating that I have personally seen through doing this over the past few years that include:
- Weight Loss
- More energy
- Feeling good physically and emotionally
- Less anxiety and resistance
- Less binge eating or overeating
- A more peaceful state of mind
- Less food guilt
- More satisfaction
Who Is Intuitive Eating For?
Intuitive eating is for everyone in my opinion. It’s how we were designed to eat. We’ve come so far away from our natural state because of advertising, “experts” and supposed health professionals telling us what our body needs. Of course, advertisers will try and tell you what you need. They need to make money!
You know best what your body needs and how it feels when it eats certain foods. Your intuition knows what your body needs to thrive.
In Conclusion – 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating
The 10 principles of intuitive eating are here to help you get the most benefit and achieve the best results from intuitive eating. They are guidelines that help to keep you on track especially if you are feeling a bit unsure about what to do. Use these principles to get the highest benefit in your intuitive eating journey.
~Meghan
(Pssst…this is totally something I teach more in-depth in my online course Intuitive Eating Academy. If you are ready to lose weight and manifest your dream body, I highly suggest you check it out here 🙂
